No Pearl Harbour raid. Victory for Japan?
- Thread starter Draconis
- Start date
nbcman
Donor
Now have the typhoon swells cited at Lingayen Gulf in 1945 that stopped USN amphib ops lasting for weeks on end which is less than what the wave conditions are on the North Shore of Hawaii from November to March. So you agree that waves of greater than 6-8 feet would stop amphib ops - which would preclude a landing on the North Shore of Hawaii in December 1941. Glad that we've cleared this up.
Dear God. Unspeakable Hawaiian Sea Mammal. This might bring Glenn out of hiding.
"Remember Pearl Harbor" will be replaced by "Remember Oahu!" Or do you honestly think the IJA can be trusted to behave civilly around enemy civilians and not act like a pack of rabid wolves? All it takes is one Lieutenant having a bad day, deciding to take it out on a town, someone witnessing it and escaping alive, and that story is going to start making its way back to the mainland. And after that, the US will NEVER make peace before Japan lays prostrate before it.
Good thing for the Americans that they're more then capable of it, since Japan has idiotically decided to throw its entire sealift capability into taking and supplying Fortress Hawaii instead of taking the resources they actually, you know, need. War effectively ends in 1943, 1944 at the latest as the Japanese Economy enters its death spiral that much sooner.
McPherson
Banned
It did not stop anything for more than 8 hours (see the actual quote), and it most certainly is not less than weather you could expect at Oahu north shore.
Might you look at this.
You will immediately notice the high riding keel and open ocean form of the landing craft. It will cut through high surf that will broach flatter bottomed Higgins boat.
Some background.
And then get a hold of this.
Jentschura, Hansgeorg; Jung, Dieter; and Mickel, Peter. Translated by Brown, J.D. 1977. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. Naval Institute Press.
And READ THIS.
It actually describes the Japanese landings under the terrible conditions they faced, so you see, I am certain you realize that I do not and will never agree with your assumptions and descriptions at all. The RTL history of what happened is the evidence.
No one seems to be mentioning ships in Hawaii seized by Japan after the invasion as a means of resupplying her own maritime capacity. Were there no civilian ships in the area? Also if planned ahead of time Japan could build the extra landing ships they would need without interfering too much with their OTL needs.
Now there's a thought...and already been beaten to it...
Now there's a thought...and already been beaten to it...
McPherson
Banned
I hope not. It would not be an ordered rational discussion based on facts and verifiable hypotheses. For the record; 軍事計画ハワイアンウォルラス (kun-se-kai-ka-kui-ha wai-i-an-wal-rus-sa), (Military Plan Hawaiian Walrus) has only a 35% chance of success after a Pearl Harbor surprise attack. The IJN can hang it up if PACFLT gets any warning time whatsoever.
The only discussion point that is relevant is the automatic assumption that the IJA cannot land. That improbable condition, once established, is patently true. THEY CAN LAND. And at the place I chose.
We seam to be missing a few things,
First off the fleet is going to have to be a LOT larger. Thus harder to hide and massively harder to supply. It was not easy for Japan to supply the raiding fleet the invasion fleet will make that look easy.
Next you have to give up something in order to pull off the invasion. You can’t add the invasion of Hawaii for free. So what does Japan give up? If they give up the wrong thing this actually could hurt them.
The point of the war was to get the resources Japan needed. Hawaii is a sink hole for Japanese resources not a bonus. So those resources they were short of are going to become more scarce.
If they pull this off “Germany First “ goes the way of the Dodo bird. And it because “Germany if we don’t need it”
And there is no way in the the world that the US will EVER sign a treaty with Japan after the pull off a sneak invasion of Hawai'i, short of Japan standing with a gun to Roosevelt’s head in the White House. And Japan winning a complete victory is pure ASB.
So if somehow this happens Japan is toast. If Japan acts like it did everywhere else. The Emperor will NOT be allowed to stay and we WILL see War Crime trials. We w I’ll also see a VERY harsh “peace treaty” forced on the smoking remains of Japan and its few remaining citizens.
First off the fleet is going to have to be a LOT larger. Thus harder to hide and massively harder to supply. It was not easy for Japan to supply the raiding fleet the invasion fleet will make that look easy.
Next you have to give up something in order to pull off the invasion. You can’t add the invasion of Hawaii for free. So what does Japan give up? If they give up the wrong thing this actually could hurt them.
The point of the war was to get the resources Japan needed. Hawaii is a sink hole for Japanese resources not a bonus. So those resources they were short of are going to become more scarce.
If they pull this off “Germany First “ goes the way of the Dodo bird. And it because “Germany if we don’t need it”
And there is no way in the the world that the US will EVER sign a treaty with Japan after the pull off a sneak invasion of Hawai'i, short of Japan standing with a gun to Roosevelt’s head in the White House. And Japan winning a complete victory is pure ASB.
So if somehow this happens Japan is toast. If Japan acts like it did everywhere else. The Emperor will NOT be allowed to stay and we WILL see War Crime trials. We w I’ll also see a VERY harsh “peace treaty” forced on the smoking remains of Japan and its few remaining citizens.
Well, I mean, that's a hard one to avoid.
As successful as the IJN was in maintaining successful operational secrecy, they only had to manage it with one discrete, fast moving task force, one which Yamamoto had managed to more or less isolate weeks before departure.
The transports the IJN would have to use to haul their 60,000 man invasion force could only creep along at 10-12 knots. So they would have to leave well in advance of the Kido Butai, in a separate force with its own escort. This enormous and disparate force has to be somehow assembled in total secrecy. And, somehow, the IJN must hope that THIS force will escape detection by the U.S. as well, despite being so abominably slow.
Likewise, you will need to establish some kind of land-based air cover on one of the other islands, because Kido Butai simply won't be enough. That means seizing the necessary islands for an air bridge, like Johnston Atoll. This makes operational security even more difficult.
This has always been the insurmountable difficulty with an Oahu invasion in December '41. It requires too many moving parts, too many things that must happen simultaneously in too many places, to keep it a secret from the United States until it's somehow too late. Can the IJN somehow land some troops on Oahu? Almost certainly. But by the time they do, they'll already be expected. You might as well feed them into a meat-grinder, and crank that handle over and over and over again.
McPherson
Banned
Here.
I think it is science fiction. In summary; the author, John J. Stephen, suggests the Japanese would land on Hawaii and use it as an airbase to bomb Oahu into submission. As an ancillary, Johnston Atoll< was to be seized as a forward fleet base.
Landings were to go in at Hilo.
Know what I think of Professor John J. Stephen's thesis? Crazier than Matsuoka, Yosuke; the Japanese foreign minister. I mean lip harmonica playing Three Stooges squirrel food in triplicate.
McPherson
Banned
Midway writ large, hmmm?
You know it was an 180 minute window at Midway? Luck is a fickle thing.
Oh, no question.
Of course, Yamamoto already had a lot of luck going his way in the first place. Like the splendidly awful weather in the North Pacific that helped keep Nagumo's task force hidden in rain squalls.
But one cannot help but be struck by how zealously PACFLT Combat intelligence was in trying to track down the location of IJN surface units and transports. And they had a fairly good bead on where most of it all was. In fact, it was precisely because Layton felt signals traffic had located most of these units that it was easier to assume that missing carriers (Carrier Divisions 1 and 2) would likely have to be accompanying forces like Takahashi's Philippine Invasion Force and Kondo's Second Fleet heading south.
Now imagine a scenario where it is not just Carrier Divisions 1 and 2 that have vanished from Layton's sight, but a very big slice of its surface and transport units that have vanished as well. As Gordon Prange put it, speaking of Takahashi's and Kondo's forces:
U.S. officials watch these ships and these forces moving south day by day, almost hour by hour, until virtual hypnosis set in. Thus it was that Japan's sweeping offensive southward misdirected American political and military attention and served as camouflage for Nagumo's task force. (At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor 60th Anniversary Edition, p. 435).
If most of these forces are now secretly redirected to Hawaii, they can no longer hypnotize American intelligence or Admiral Kimmel.
McPherson
Banned
Yeah, but you forget those helpful IJN assistants... in Washington who monkeyed up USN intelligence estimates that screwed up the Pearl Harbor warnings and almost lost the USN the Battle of Midway, Richmond Kelly Turner (author of Savo Island fame, the yutz.) and the ever helpful gruesome twosome, the Redman Brothers.
With officers like those clowns (And never forget these jokers; Captain W.W. Smith, (Flag secretary), Captain J.B. Earle (N-2 to Kimmel), Marc Mitscher (the great aircraft carrier tactician, hah!), and Miles Browning (Halsey's chief of staff), and even Halsey when he Elmer Fudds), the whole IJN in grand parade could actually sail behind that weather front and pull it off, ya' know?
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A rogue's gallery, sure. But I tend to think that if you bonk Turner hard enough on the head, even he might wake up. "Where the hell IS most of the Japanese Navy, anyway?"
In all fairness Turner did end up being pretty good at comanding amphibious assault fleets
Here.
I think it is science fiction. In summary; the author, John J. Stephen, suggests the Japanese would land on Hawaii and use it as an airbase to bomb Oahu into submission. As an ancillary, Johnston Atoll< was to be seized as a forward fleet base.
Landings were to go in at Hilo.
Know what I think of Professor John J. Stephen's thesis? Crazier than Matsuoka, Yosuke; the Japanese foreign minister. I mean lip harmonica playing Three Stooges squirrel food in triplicate.
There actually was a Japanese landing planned and discussed for Oahu as an adjunct to Pearl Harbor. It was written up by Watanabe and Genda, the former believing 30,000 troops would be needed while the latter believed it would only need 15,000.
I believe the landing sites were at or near Waialua and Kanehoe Bay. I don't recall Johnson Island or Big Island as part of it. The idea was to secure the main bases on Oahu then spread out from there counting on the locals to help reinforce their hold on the island. There were few tanks on Hawaii at the time and yes the fleet would need reinforcement but in the immediate aftermath of a successful Pearl Harbor raid it might not be impossible. Do the Japanese have any sort of paratroopers they can use?